PROS! Help with grouping under dates...easy

[brianb]

hello pros,

This should be easy, but I can't figure it out. Any coding examples are heavily appreciated. I'm using PHP & MySQL as my backend.

Basically, I have a page that is spitting out all of the entries for a certain month.

Within the list that is being printed, many of the entries have the same date. Instead of printing my list like this:

• December 12th, 2002
  Record # 1

• December 12th, 2002
  Record # 2

• December 12th, 2002
  Record # 3

• December 10th, 2002
  Record # 4

• December 10th, 2002
  Record # 5

...I'd like to print the records out under one date heading, grouping them together, like this:

• December 12th, 2002
  Record # 1
  Record # 2
  Record # 3

• December 10th, 2002
  Record # 4
  Record # 5

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT!!!! Thanks!

[archangel_617b]

If you have the data already sorted by date, then just store the current date being displayed in a variable, then print that variable only when you hit a new date (assigning the new date to the variable):

while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rid)) 
{
    if ($date != $row['date'])
    {
        $date = $row['date'];
        print('<br />'.$date.'<br />');
    }

// print the data
}

[brianb]

Ok...

I've tried and tried and I'm still not getting it. Can I get some help with my actual code here?

Check it out...

<?PHP

if( $res == '' )

{
echo "Sorry. No listings.";
}

else
{

while ( $arr = mysql_fetch_array( $res ) )

{
echo "<b>$arr[thedate]</b>";
echo "<table width='100%' border='0' cellspacing='0' cellpadding='3'>";
echo "<td width='100%'>";

     //print out a poster for the current film
     $image = "/movies/images/thumbs/$arr[filmID].jpg";         
     $html = "<a href='/movies/film.php?filmID=$arr[filmID]' class='images'><img src='$image' border='1' align='left' hspace='6'></a>\n";
     $alt_html = "<a href='/movies/film.php?filmID=$arr[filmID]' class='images'><img src='/movies/media/none_small.gif' border='1' align='left' hspace='6'></a>\n";
     printImage($image, $html, $alt_html);

echo "<a href='/movies/film.php?filmID=$arr[filmID]' class='main'><u>";
echo ( fix_title($arr[title]) );
echo "</u></a><br>$arr[plot]</td></tr></table><img src='/media/random/1pix_black_dot.gif' width='98%' height='1' vspace='5'><br>";
}

}//end else

?>

Please let me know what you think!

Thanks in advance!

[archangel_617b]

Originally posted by archangel_617b

1 : while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($rid)) 
2 : {
3 :     if ($date != $row['date'])
4 :     {
5 :        $date = $row['date'];
6 :        print('<br />'.$date.'<br />');
7 :    }
8 :
9 :    // print the data
10:}

[/B]

Okay, you have line 1: which is the main loop which you use. That's fine.

Line 3: $date holds the value of the current date, right? It is null the first time through the loop so it will always fall through to line 5:

Line 5: $date is updated to the new date of the next series of data.

Line 6: Since this new date has not been printed, it gets printed here. The next time through the loop, if it is another item for the same date, then lines 5: and 6: will not be executed and so you will not have duplicate dates displayed.

Line 9: This is where you print the <table> stuff that you have for the images.

Please be specific about which part you do not understand. The problems you are having are fundamental features of procedural programming.